Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Friday September 19, 2008 @03:11PM
from the 480-million-is-cheap? dept.

coondoggie writes to tell us that Lockheed Martin has landed a $485 million contract to create the spacecraft for NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) project. "MAVEN is the second mission in NASA's Mars Scout Program — a series of small, low-cost, principal investigator-led missions to the Red Planet, NASA said. The Phoenix Mars Lander was the first mission under the program. Lockheed Martin is the industry partner on the Phoenix mission. It designed and built the spacecraft, and also provided flight operations and currently surface operations for the lander. The mission has been extended through Sept. 30, 2008."

NASA this week awarded Lockheed Martin a $485 million contract to design, build and operate the spacecraft for NASA's 2013 space mission known as Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) program.

Hope Lockhead's repository has all the necessary jars, or this build is gonna fail hard. I mean, maven's okay for what I do, but I would hope that for 480 million, they could come up with something a bit nicer.

We all know that the overpaid Slashdot editors can't be bothered with correcting the text of the submissions, much less to check the links in the submission. But I have not seen, so far, that they would manage to get the title wrong, too!?

For the record, at this moment the title of this story reads "Lockheed Gets $485M From NASA To Create MAVAN Craft".

So, we're not going to have a highly publicized 6 month bid process, and then give it to the company with the better plane, and then take it away because the local company is crying about sour grapes? And then have them both re-bid, and then cancel that project because it looks again like the company that start with a B is starting ti whine AGAIN because they just can't compete in the competitive market because their damn plane just isn't good enough. So we scrap the whole damn idea till "later" and make our guys fly around in 30 year old gas filled bombs with outdated electronics hoping that one doesn't fuckin' blow up over a residential area?

What's the fun in that? I didn't get a notice to bid! I'm going to congress!

You missed the first phase of it, with the contract being awarded without much oversight to the local company after the awarding officer is promised a position, then the sexual antics that follow with executives leading to the downfall of two of them. That part is much more interesting.

It's in comparison to the older programs such as Viking, Galileo, and Cassini, which cost several billion each in current dollars (but which did their jobs incredibly well). The move to smaller, faster, cheaper followed the loss of the Mars Observer.

What NASA management didn't factor into smaller, faster, cheaper is that you can normally pick only two of the three.

The three you can only pick two of are better, faster and cheaper. The point of the program is that given that even the best probes have quite a high failure rate, it's not worth trying to engineer everything to be "perfect"; it's better to send three cheap probes and accept that one of them will fail than one expensive probe that has a substantial chance of failing and losing everything.

I know what the point of the program is. NASA has been notoriously bad at making thosee goals, which is why I kept the 'pick two' mantra within their own range of options. They miss budget targets and milestone and launch dates (even when cutting corners), and in some cases have only made the 'smaller' requirement by cutting instruments out to make the launch weight or the schedule.

I'd be interested in a few of the old super-probes which, while certainly expensive and with their own variable calendars, ge

Galileo lost a huge amount of data because its high-gain antenna was never usable, considerably reducing the return on the more than $1 billion invested in it. Mars Observer was simply lost, $800 million down the drain. When you put all of your eggs into one probe, a single mistake destroys an enormous amount. Using more, smaller probes reduces the risks and ultimately either costs the same or saves money. A gain in flexibility is just a bonus.

If you are talking about Bush, you are right.
But the United States ? Does not have the competences? Madness.
I think what is lacking here is profit. There is no profit involved in going to the moon thus, they lost interest.
Maybe if they were people to democratize on the moon... But I digress

Oh, there is none? Why, because nobody has been there for 40 years. The United States does not have the competence to operate space research.

Forty years ago the US proved humans could do it, and that it wasn't a complete freak accident. Who else has gone there? The russians? The europeans? The chinese? Anyone else? Oh that's right, nobody. Not because we're so primitive that we couldn't, but because we still haven't figured out a good reason for doing so, except to do so. He3 for the imaginary fusion reactor? Telescopes that do just fine in orbit or with advances in technology on earth's surface? The moon is pretty much a big rock, Mars is the i

There were lots of good reasons to continue to go there, #1 of them being getting the human race out of the situation of being bound to one planet with its fragile ecosystem.

Almost any disaster here on earth some would survive in deep bunkers, probably more than on an offworld base. If earth is utterly destroyed, we're centuries away from a self-sustaining base anywhere else. Not where we can just go for a vacation trip with pre-dropped resources, but with people and machinery to produce everything themselves. Check out the few attempts that have been made at making a closed ecosystem, which even with huge structures have had issues with food amounts, power, oxygen levels and s

It's irrational to consider that the United States, in its current condition, could or should operate a Mars mission.

It's irrational to criticize the pursuit of science and discovery, while being the co-founder of worthy initiatives which promote openness for the purposes of advancing mankind. Call me crazy, but I don't think America's "current condition" should derail established efforts towards these scientific goals.

If you want to argue that sending the money to Lockheed Martin is a mistake, then that's fine. I've heard much criticism of their organization from reputable associates and I tend to believe that there'

The nice thing about Open Source is that it doesn't require billion-dollar budgets.

By rights, we really should have a permanent base on the moon by now, and should have already put somebody on Mars. But unfortunately, that wasn't the first priority for the United States. We want to fight stupid wars with insignificant countries. We want 1% of the population to essentially own the rest, and we're willing to manipulate the economy to make that more and more the case every day.

The nice thing about Open Source is that it doesn't require billion-dollar budgets.

Wheeler [dwheeler.com] might disagree with that, albeit the 'budgets' are largely time-based via volunteer effort or corporate-based via organizations who realize sharing software is cheaper than allowing it to be hoarded.

This is not a country that does great things any longer.

You might be right about that, but I find fault in the logic that we shouldn't fund NASA because they didn't do much during the last 40 years. You complain about stupid wars, but what they experienced in 1969 was the culmination of an effort to win the mother of "stupid wars". Whether the Russians or

It's not very clear to me that we learned a lot about manned missions since 1969. Orion has a very "back to the past" flavor about it - it looks like a big Apollo. The space shuttle architecture is being abandoned as too complicated to fly any longer, and the space station doesn't have much of a mission to justify it.

We learned how to make good robots.

I think Europe and Japan will make some progress. The U.S. is going to Europe for its next manned vehicle, a man-capable version of the Jules Verne.

It's not very clear to me that we learned a lot about manned missions since 1969.

Telescopes, rovers, and orbiters have yielded good knowledge. No?

Orion *is* a big Apollo lander. I recall that it will be capable of landing 3 man on the surface (a 50% increase!). If you were looking for an alternative type of lander, maybe its possible that they got it right in the 60s. On Earth, we the vehicles that are capable of landing include have helicopters and airplanes and not much else. And these don't seen like good ideas to me. Maybe this [moller.com]? The big improvement, though, is Ares V [wikipedia.org] which should enable us to do a big more than just flying to the Moon or Mars and back. With the materials that we'll be able to bring things will get real exciting (you just wait).

For Christ's sake, even as much as I love the idea of space exploration, I totally agree for financial reasons only. Has anybody else seen the national debt lately? While there are plenty of better things to cut, we do have to start somewhere.

I disagree. We are spending a c*apload of money in fixing the bull$hit that this administration has done for the past 8 years. Why does science have to suffer? Start cutting down paychecks and jobs in D.C. and subsidies to big oil and tobacco companies.

Absolutely those subsidies should be gone, I agree one-hundred percent. Of course, so should a thousand-and-one other things too. The problem is that the US is burning the candle at both ends by spending like there's no tomorrow. In reality, not only is there a tomorrow, but a whole lot more of them after that. Science funding is the last on my list of things to cut, but it's on the list nonetheless.

Despite the ad-selling headlines you've apparently been reading, the "current condition" of the United States is neither desperate nor hopeless.

We have a stable republican government, a massive GDP, an industrious and reasonably well-educated work force, solid infrastructure (utilities, transportation, commerce, etc.), a strong university-based R&D system awash in basic science available to exploit, and a long tradition of creatively overcoming both internal and external challenges.

I wouldn't be surprised if some shill zings me as off-topic or inflammatory, but...

Is this the *same* outfit that got hundreds of millions, if not *billions* for the widely-ridiculed Bertholf National Security Cutter widely derided as a boondoggle and which might not see more copies built because that outfit couldn't coordinate with subcontractors to get the damned communications systems' TEMPEST security wiring in place?

Ok... how can *i* get just $50,000 of that cash without killing, blackmailing, or doing

While I'm grateful for one Admiral Elmo Zumwalt for making changes that made Navy life better before I joined (well, a number of admirals hated his guts, and a number he had to fire, IIRC), I am glad it appears the DDG-1000 design is not going to see too many more copies. It is just an ungainly appearance, un-naval looking, and it seems more navies using Aegis want the DDG-51 look (for now...). Every time i LOOKED at the DDG-1000 my stomach growled. It's too bad

Correct me if I'm wrong, because this is an interesting topic, but to summarize your post: "Aesthetics are more important than stealthiness of ships at sea from radar." There are other failures from the program, but you bring up its looks instead.

Seems like me with my student loans... I owe so God damned much, why not just buy this second SLI video card? It's not like $300 is going to make a noticeable dent in my loans and getting a new video card would be REALLY fun!

Hey, space exploration is fine - that's actually advancing the state of humanity. What ISN'T fine is spending 20% of the budget JUST ON ONE TINY FUCKING COUNTRY, and that's in addition to the *regular* military spending!

Small, low-cost investigator-led missions in an atmosphere. In other words, robotic hang-gliders, gliders and microlights. And this is going to cost $485 million? How many does NASA expect to get for that? The Germans had mastered the basic technology in the 40s, with rocket-launched glider bombs, radiation-proofing by better shielding rather than expensive layouts has been used in space vehicles for ages now, and UAVs have become practically commonplace. Yes, you need more reliable unfurling systems, as yo

The R100 plan is ideal for exactly those sorts of conditions. The original actually did fly through some really nasty storms - quite possibly 60mph or worse - and modern materials and building techniques should provide vastly superior structural strength. The superior shape to modern blimps means you should be able to fly directly into 60mph winds, as you have a far and away lower profile. For the same reason, side winds should be much less of a threat. However, the R100 is usually also described as much st

If the R101 is in any shape to support anything, it's the ground. Obviously, with the R100 design, you'd need a much larger volume (but hydrogen is still vastly lighter than the CO2 of Martian air), a much lower mass (the R100 was designed to support a large human crew, aviation fuel and gigantic engines, and had a frame made of steel and aluminium as I recall, whereas a UAV version for unmanned Martian missions needs a few tens of pounds of payload, solar panels and a few light electric motors, and a frame

The ships can simultaneously be stealthy and attractive. One example: every navy has standards and many have differentiation in appearances due to national and architectural and service input. Anyway, while i am happy th SK navy and the JMSDF have formidable ships, i wish the SK would effectively or economically find a way to to suck up or give in to political reasons resulting in the King Sejong The Great looking like another Burke clone. SK can do BETTER than THAT. Atago is sexier than DDG-8+.